Indoor Flea Market

It almost takes the fun out of things when you actually have PERMISSION to shoot in a building facing an imminent demise. This long abandoned building seemed to have quite a history - home to a meat locker in the basement (sounds sketchy I know), a mexican restaurant and a strip club turned sports bar and then indoor flea market, and the history shows in the decor.

I received a phone call late last week from a city employee that had been using the building for some training and as a viewer of my blog he wanted to see if I'd be interested in shooting there so I called Carli and we headed over to meet him there and see what we could come up with.

This is the result.

Digital Makeup -- Before and After

Here are a small sampling of portraits showing the different types of retouching I do in Photoshop. Many times if I do not have a makeup artist scheduled I will simply ask the girl to come with no makeup on and plan to do it later. Other times, as is the case with Cassie in the green tube top, a very talented makeup artist named Kristian did a fantastic job, but we wanted to shoot several concepts and it was simply quicker to change the color in Photoshop. And sometimes, in the case of the image with the thistle weeds - even the plants need a little makeup. :-)

Click the photos for a larger version.

Ruinous Decay

Inorganic Decay is very interesting to me. I love the evidence of a bustling past, the idea of complete abandonment and the extreme toll that seems to occur when a place is simply... left. Which is what makes the discovery of this location an absolute gold mine in my book!

Located about 1.5 miles from my front door it's an abandoned school of some sort, since it's probably trespassing I won't mention any more about the location so don't ask, but lets just say we found a way into this completely boarded up building and discovered that what appeared to be a small brick structure is absolutely giant! Two floors of long hallways and dozens and dozens of rooms in various levels of muck and grime. Some are pitch dark and some are lit by broken sky lights. Some rooms smell like 'yard sale' and some smell like 'hillbilly farmer's market'. Some rooms are beautiful with vintage wallpaper and some are absolutely creepy, like the one with a whole bunch of baby dresses strewn about with the words, "Satan was here" scrawled across the wall in thick yellow paint.

What better place to bring a couple of models, a talented wardrobe designer and a half dozen gorgeous hand-made dresses! A big giant thank you goes out to everyone for having the absolute worst cell phone rings in the history of creepy cell phone rings. As you are wandering long, pitch black hallways with two weak flashlights there is no better sound to hear than a slow melodic whistling eight rooms over when your party of six is all a short arms length away... that split second it takes to realize it's a phone in someone's bag is not a pleasant split second to say the least.

I'd say the creepiest experience occurred shortly after the shoot in the purple dress and pearls, we had found our next room (the white insane asylum type room) and I went back to collect all the lights to re-set them up. (PHOTO TIP! I used a Lumedyne 1,000WS strobe with battery pack for this entire shoot) I walked back, by myself, and collected the light stand, battery, camera, and then I noticed an almost new bright yellow backpack sitting next to my camera. I was positive that it wasn't there when I set up everything so I figured it belonged to one of the girls so I picked that up too and made my way back down the long hallway. When I arrived back to the group I set everything down and held out the bag expecting its' owner to thankfully take it from me, instead I got a bunch of odd looks. The bag belonged to no one. In a house of ruinous decay somehow the one pristine object found it's way next to my camera...

Models: Kenzie and Cassie, Wardrobe by: McKell Maddox

Updated Website!

Sorry for the lack of posts, I swear I'm trying to make time for them. In the meantime, take a gander at my brand new website with completely updated galleries!

www.jakegarn.com

Delicious Times Two.

My series of models with food continues to grow, here are some highlights from last month.

-Jake

Evolution of a Photo

One subject I haven't touched much on is the advantages of shooting in RAW format as opposed to JPG and using a RAW editor (like Adobe Lightroom or Adobe Bridge) to make exposure and white-balance corrections before doing the final retouches in Adobe Photoshop.

I have included five images that show the RAW image, then with corrections applied in Adobe Lightroom, and finally the finished image after Photoshop. I'll be talking more about this process in a future post. For now, notice sometimes there is a major change and sometimes it's just a subtle change, depending on the photo.

As always, click on the thumbnails for a larger version.

"Reflections of Christ" - A traveling exhibit.

I know it's probably odd for a Fashion Photography Blog to mention a photography exhibit depicting the life of Jesus, but someone sent me a link to this slide show of fine art images and I was absolutely floored.

You know how sometimes while looking at a painting you just can't believe it's not a photograph? Well, for the first time ever I'm staring at these photographs and I can't believe they're not paintings. The control of light, the emotion, the narratives are all absolutely compelling. Kudos to the actors, photographers, stylists, musicians... everyone that was involved. My hat is off.

So for the first time on my blog I'm linking to another photographer's work, I hope you enjoy.

See the slideshow here - Reflections Slideshow

Modest is the Hottest.

Nicole is one of my new favorites, not only is she gorgeous but she's a lot of fun to shoot and is getting better at it with every new project. One of my favorite things about Nicole is her absolute insistence on complete modesty in every single shoot. As an artist sometimes I am guilty of bending the rules of modesty that I maintain in my life outside of photography. I am a church going, active practicer of the Mormon religion - and for those that don't know modesty in dress is part of our lifestyle.

In Nicole's very own words, "Modest is the hottest." Of course that can be argued by some but with these photos she definitely makes a strong case!

That being said, enjoy these new examples showcasing the technique of "faking an HDR image" that I demonstrated in my last video tutorial.

Tutorial on Faking an HDR Image

The readers have spoken, after much anticipation here is a tutorial on my image titled Farm Supply. Enjoy!

**Disclaimer** In the video I do start with an image that has been color corrected, it did not come out of my camera that way (even though that's what I said). I will do a future video tutorial on basic color correction!

My Next Video Tutorial

All right, so I'm giving the power to you, my loyal viewers! Take a look at my images and tell me what you'd like to see explained in my next video tutorial. No secrets, no limits. The image with the most votes gets a tutorial, pure and simple! Though I do reserve the right to show you the same techniques with a different image, but never-the-less, you'll learn something!

How to Vote
Take a look at my images - the most complete library is available at My DeviantART Gallery and leave the name of the image you'd like to see explained in the comment section. Pure and simple!

Happy Voting!
Jake

PS - I appreciate everyone's comments and subscriptions, please keep sharing this blog with your friends, family and even enemies. The more viewers and subscribers I get the more I'm inspired to continue adding content. Hint Hint. :-)